


Sleep Is For the Weak

by MrsSaxon



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: 3 years waiting for Will Graham, And he has absolutely no idea how to deal with this, Hannibal has nightmares, He's got some bad memories, Hurt/Comfort, I'm just saying, Imprisonment, Insomnia, M/M, Nightmares, Prison, Sad cannibal noises, actually more like happy crying cannibal noises, h/c, indignity, sleep paralysis, we'll help with the nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 13:59:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5336627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsSaxon/pseuds/MrsSaxon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What do you fear, my lady?"<br/>"A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire."</p><p>I doubt Hannibal has ever seen the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but he might have a surprising amount in common with Eowyn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleep Is For the Weak

**Author's Note:**

> I am under heavy finals stress and wanted to write something sweet to de-stress so everyone shut up, relax, and pass the people cookies. We all need them.

"Hannibal..."

There were no chains, no straps, yet he could not move.

"Hannibal."

Peering up, he could make out the dim light, far above him, illuminating his little desk and his little chair in his little cell in the little basement in-

"Hannibal!"

He opened his eyes, surprised to find the view from between his fingers. He dropped them and was aware of Will's concern long before he managed to pull his eyes up to look at his face.

"Yes, Will, I'm perfectly fine. The porridge is delicious, thank you for making it," Hannibal interjected calmly before Will could say whatever he was going to say.

"Bullshit," Will spat, sliding back the chair next to Hannibal's at the end of the breakfast table.

Hannibal's eyes tightened at the grating sound of the wood on tile. "I don't appreciate vulgarity first thing in the morning, Will," he replied brusquely, disguising his discomfort as anger. He picked up his coffee, mercifully black, but too weak. Oh well, Will had tried, he appreciated the effort.

"I remember what I looked like, you know," Will continued, eyes never leaving Hannibal's face.

Hannibal glanced up, politely curious.

"While I was sick with encephalitis, gaunt and sweaty, circles under my eyes that never went away," Will glared at him, "You're starting to look like that."

Hannibal rolled his eyes, taking his spoon and addressing his porridge, "I assure you I do not have encephalitis."

"I know you don't, but you _look_ like you do," Will's voice was gaining momentum, pitch rising. If he didn't let Will get it out now, the tension would only make the throbbing in his head worse.

"Your point being?" Hannibal said testily, delicately swallowing his spoonful of breakfast.

"You're not sleeping! You haven't slept for weeks, you're running yourself ragged and it's going to get one or both of us killed!" Will was nearly shouting, exasperated. Hannibal's hands clenched on his silverware; he restrained himself from showing any sign of pain as he endured the reverberations off the hard walls of the kitchen.

"You _have_ to let yourself sleep," Will begged, voice softer now, "You have to go to bed at night, you have to turn off that enormous, paranoid brain of yours."

Even distressed, Hannibal was not going to let that sick irony pass. He rolled his eyes to Will and very slightly raised an eyebrow. The kettle was having none of it today.

Will brushed off the justified reply with some highly unimpressed eyebrows of his own and rubbed his face to relax. "Why is it you won't sleep? Just tell me, why?"

Hannibal took another spoonful of porridge, postponing his answer as long as possible. He swallowed after holding the boiled oats in his mouth for far longer than was good for their flavor, set down his spoon with care, straightened the table cloth, reached for his coffee.

"Hannibal!" Will interrupted sharply.

He sighed, "There's much we have to do, we're not safe yet."

"And how exactly are you going to be any good to our escape if you can't walk straight? Hannibal, you know exactly how badly sleep deprivation inhibits motor functions, not to mention higher brain functions such as critical thinking and analysis. You can't be you and not sleep, you'll destroy yourself." Will took his curled hand in his; the sweet, genuine touch of affection preventing Hannibal's already slowed thoughts from moving any further.

"You've planned and you've checked and you've double-checked. You've run contingency after contingency and when you exhausted all of those, you started drawing up designs for a summer home in Spain and asked me how I felt about Greenland," Will shook his head, "You're running out of excuses. Now tell me, in the interest of our mutual safety and security, what is going on?"

Will's hand was so warm. Damn him, he was making it so very difficult to keep avoiding the subject.

His lips opened but no sound came out. This was bizarrely hard. He swallowed and tried again, "You once said... not sleeping is the best way to avoid bad dreams."

Will’s long breath of air into the room was trademark epiphany. Hannibal stared into his porridge, expecting it to pity him too now.

"What is it you're trying to avoid?" Will spoke softly.

"Nothing I can't overcome," Hannibal replied with a forced smile, more for his own benefit than Will's. He picked up his spoon again with renewed determination.

"Hannibal," Will said again and now his touch was on his cheek. Just for a second, a graze of his knuckles, to still him and keep him from looking for alternatives. Will was picking up on what his touch did to him far too quickly, clever boy. Soon they'd be able to communicate through touch alone. But it unfortunately meant Will understood his power and was capable of using it now.

"A single room, eleven feet by fourteen, one desk, one chair, one cot. I had two bookcases and some of my drawings, when Alana was feeling generous. I had nothing but the air I breathed when she was not."

Will watched and listened and said nothing. But he kept his hand on Hannibal's, keeping his touch constant in this.

"It wasn't the isolation, as you might guess. I was not hopeless. It was the cage. It was four walls I could never outgrow no matter how far I went in my mind palace. I would always come back here. Floor, ceiling, one light, no doors, no windows. And a large glass pane where I could be watched like a lab animal, like a circus freak."

Hannibal wet his lips, swallowing.

"I was trapped Will. I had volunteered to be trapped, but it was still a trap," his head tilted downward, for a moment terrified he would see the grey legs of his chair on the thin grey carpet. But no, no, it wasn't, not anymore, "In my dreams, I'm still trapped. I cannot move. I cannot escape. I sit in the same still spot and I wait."

"For me," Will whispered.

Hannibal started, almost forgetting he was there.

"But I'm here now, I came back for you," Will's eyes were earnest when Hannibal turned to meet them.

His lips tried to smile but it came out all wrong, all wrong. It was a twisted, misshapen thing, full of sadness, not joy. "But in my dreams..."

And here was the part that stung. And what he would not say, what Will would have to guess. In his dreams, he didn't believe Will would come for him. He had no hope there, nothing to wait for. There was only the trap, forever.

Hannibal’s hope was that if he put as much distance between himself and prison, the nightmares would stop. Until then, no point sleeping and being forced to dwell on experiences he was actively working to forget.

He shifted out of Will’s grip abruptly, not looking at him once, and settled into his breakfast with determined vigor. Stale porridge and cooled, black coffee that Will had made him. Nothing could taste better.

“Stop,” Will broke in again, but this time words weren’t enough, he would try actions. He put a hand on Hannibal’s forearm and squeezed hard enough to tell Hannibal not to resist. Hannibal glanced at Will out of the corner of his eye, expressionless.

Will breathed deeply, “Enough of this. Do you trust me?”

Hannibal leaned back slowly, a wry look crossing his face. He didn’t answer.

Will grimaced in after thought, “Stupid question. Do this for me anyway, close your eyes.”

Hannibal sat a little more straightly in his chair, setting down his spoon, “Will, I do not-”

“Close them and do as I say, Dr. Lecter.” It was the tone Will normally reserved for when he had a gun in his hand. A little piqued, Hannibal grudgingly closed his eyes, a critical frown on his face warning Will not to push his displeasure any further.

Next there was the awful grating of the chair on tiles again and then Will taking both his hands and pulling.

“Get up, please,” Will’s tone was much amended now and the addition of politeness restored several points of Hannibal’s patience.

Hannibal would have liked the use of his hands to lift his chair neatly and quietly to step out from behind the table, but Will wanted to do this his way and scuff marks be damned. He winced visibly at the loud skidding and pouted.

“It’s not leaving a mark on the floor,” Will’s voice sounded beleaguered, reading Hannibal’s complaints loud and clear.

“It’s leaving a mark on my ear drums,” Hannibal returned smartly, not in a mood to brook imperfection.

Will snorted, “Yeah, well, if you slept at all, maybe you wouldn’t be quite so sensitive.” Will had already led him out of the kitchen, Hannibal was fairly sure of his destination too as Will hadn’t bothered to take a circuitous route to confuse him.

“Then I _would_ complain about the floor,” Hannibal smirked. Will chuckled, giving Hannibal’s hands an involuntary squeeze. The pressure made him draw breath sharply. Maybe Will was right, his feelings were far closer to the surface than he would have preferred. Perhaps some sleep would restore some of his control.

A door opened with a mild squeak and Hannibal was pulled, hesitatingly, into his own bedroom. Even if his feet didn’t know the path so well, the thick, well-used smell of the room, his own smell, was a dead giveaway.

“Will,” Hannibal sighed.

“Did I say you could speak, Dr. Lecter?” He could tell Will was smiling as he said it.

“Will,” Hannibal tried again, exasperated.

“No,” Will overrode him quickly, stopping next to Hannibal’s bed and letting go of one hand to lead him by the shoulder to the edge of it, pushing gently, “Get onto the bed, come on.”

Hannibal humpfed, but did as instructed, sliding into his preferred spot on his own mattress, head resting on his favorite pillow. Will let go of his hands and padded around the bed, then the mattress gave and Will was sliding on next to him.

Will’s hands reached out and took his forearms, tugging him closer. Hannibal kept his eyes closed as he had not yet been told he could open them. It had nothing to do with the fact he questioned whether or not he had the strength to do so.

“Now, I want you to go to sleep, Dr. Lecter,” Will murmured, close enough Hannibal could just feel his warm breath over his cheek, “I want you to sleep right here next to me and if there are any nightmares, I’ll be here to… well, distract you, I guess.”

Hannibal realized inside Will’s hesitation that Will didn’t actually have a plan. Will had no idea how to make the nightmares go away any better than he did. Will just wanted to try. Will just thought that being together, physically, he might stand a better chance.

Hannibal pressed his face a little harder into the pillow so Will couldn’t see his face shift and his throat swallow. He nodded in response and, carefully, slid one hand out of Will’s grip to trace his arm with a finger, from elbow, to wrist, to palm and digits. Hannibal wrapped his hand around Will’s and squeezed hard.

“May I… open my eyes a moment before I sleep?” Hannibal whispered.

“Yes, you can,” Will answered softly.

Hannibal opened his heavy eyes blearily and tilted his face up until he could make out Will, reclined on his largest pillows, looking down at him tenderly, their hands interwoven. Hannibal looked at him like that, Will doing what he did best, caring for strays.

He had never planned on becoming one of Will’s strays. Years ago, he would have recoiled at the very idea. But his younger self had no idea what it felt like when Will Graham looked at him like this. How it felt when Will Graham held him like this, like this.

Hannibal looked down, saw their legs nearly touching, their bodies echoing posture and his eyes closed. Just in time, the tears filled, unnoticed, behind his eyelids. He bent his face into the pillow, almost wishing Will could be somewhere where he couldn’t see him.

Lying on the same bed though, it was impossible to hide the trembling. “Shhh, shhh,” Will’s voice whispered above him. Will let go of his hand, but then Hannibal felt it on his back. Will moved closer, his body pressing up against Hannibal’s as he leaned over to comfort him.

Hannibal let his arms stretch the mere inches to Will’s body and wrap around him. “Shhh, shhh…” Will repeated, stroking his back, his shoulders, his hair. Will laid a warm hand on top of his head and he soon felt the pressure of a kiss there. Hannibal snuffled wetly, ignoring how his eyes seemed to be leaking. He could attend to that later.

“Shhh, shhh…” Will sighed, softest of all, pressing Hannibal even closer. Will’s arms came around him, legs overlapping, entwining. Will let Hannibal press his head against his chest, to feel his heart beat. It was the same… it felt just the same as when Will had pulled himself up against him to push them both over the cliff. And just as then, Hannibal felt his heart slow, stutter, and resume in sync with Will’s.

The blackness around him was by now so thick he couldn’t resist, sleep was about to take him whole at last. But he had one last thought to cling to before he slipped under, he wasn’t alone anymore, Will Graham was here. He really was here.


End file.
